A Helpful Vestal

 The Vestal is a beautiful moth but also a very enterprising one, capable of migrating from the Continent to the UK every year in spite of its thumbnail size. It takes its name from both the air of purity given by the simple, delicate colouring and specifically the pinkish-purple band which resembles the stripes on the ceremonial robes worn by the eponymous women in Ancient Rome who ran the temple of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth.

My photos of Vestals are normally like the one below as the moth is almost always crouched with its wings tightly folded and seldom reacts when tickled or otherwise disturbed. I was lucky that a tumble of eggboxes temporarily disconcerted the one above and I was quick enough to capture the full spread of its wings.

It is a good time of year for fragile-looking 'Laura Ashley' moths and one of the largest and most striking is the Swallowtail, below. Almost ghostly in colouring and flight, it usually has a fairly brief, single flight window in July but the current weather has played pop with orthodoxy. This is probably a second generation example, freshly emerged from its chrysalis and blessed with the return of warm, dry weather.

The Light Emerald is another such but around in much larger numbers and for a longer period. Its lovely green is repeated in the humble lacewing, second below, whose wings when tilted in the light also glow with purple and pink.

The last of my regular sallow moths has turned up, the actual Sallow with its scrambled egg colouring, tones shared by the little micro Carcina quercana which has recently been given the very literal-minded English name of Long-horned Flat Body. The lovely pink background to the second example is Me.

Away from these pretty moths, we have a purposeful Lunar Underwing, a very common arrival now that late Summer is upon us, and an alarming-looking but sleepily docile hornet stumbling dozily from one eggbox to a second.